主題：The Walk of a Queen — An Interactive Retelling of Cathleen ni Houlihan
使用平台：Custom-built interactive website (audio-synced visual novel)
文本：W. B. Yeats & Lady Gregory, Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902)
作品介紹：
This project is an interactive website retelling W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory's Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902). The user plays as Michael Gillane and faces three decision points throughout the story. The first two let the player engage with the old woman in their own way, but the third forces the same outcome no matter what: Michael leaves with her. The site is fully voice-acted, with audio timed to the text, and includes background illustrations and an epilogue explaining the historical and mythological context behind the play's ending. The goal is to let the audience experience the play's argument about Irish nationalism.
1. How We Thought of It
When we started brainstorming for the project, we did not pick a play immediately. Instead, we wanted to present the context of Ireland in the 20th century. After going through all the works we covered in class, we decided Cathleen ni Houlihan would work best. Once we settled on the play, we decided to focus on two aspects: the symbolic Irish representation of the old woman, and the forceful pull of nationalism, shown through the three choices.
2. The Naming
We titled the project The Walk of a Queen, which was taken directly from the play's final line: Patrick says he saw "a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen." While researching the character of the Old Woman, we came across the Wikipedia entry on Kathleen Ni Houlihan as a mythic figure, which traces this exact phrase back to the older Irish Sovereignty Goddess tradition: a recurring figure who appears as an aged, suffering woman and is renewed into a young queen once a hero commits to her cause. So we decided to use this line as our title, since it captures the exact moment the play turns the Old Woman from a personal character into a national symbol.
3. The Three Choices
For the user experience, the project is built around three decision points the player faces as Michael. The first two build up the character of Cathleen. The final choice is where the telling of nationalism begins. When they pressed the first two, it showed that Michael left. When they pressed the last one, the story continued, making them feel like they made the right decision. Nevertheless, it ends with Michael still leaving, and an epilogue to explain the bigger picture. This ties back to what the play was originally written to do. We wanted to emulate and represent what Yeats and Gregory were doing with Cathleen ni Houlihan: building a structure where nationalist feeling does not arrive through reasoning, but simply takes hold, regardless of what Michael(the user) thinks they are choosing.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathleen_ni_Houlihan
[AI使用說明]
The entire site was built through Claude Sonnet 4.6. (We went back and forth with it to refine the project over many versions, the final build is actually version 90, so below we only included our first initial prompt. If the professor wants more detail on how the whole project was built, feel free to let me know, I'm happy to show the entire process!)
Concept: user plays through it once, makes some choices as Michael, and for the third choice, no matter what they pick, Michael ends up leaving with the old woman. Third choice: they choose once, and it leads to Michael leaving. Then I want them to go through the same scene again, same dialogue, same choice points (but they can’t choose the same choice again), and same outcome of Michael leaving.
Sequence: Intro - roles - script – epilogue (I want cards that explain what the three choices mean, the Irish context this story is built upon, and the transformation from old woman to queen) - Outro
here's our script: [script]
attached are the recorded audio files for the script